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PTSD

The summer of 1997 was the summer I turned 14. We began the summer by going to ATI’s big yearly national conference in Knoxville, at the University of Tennessee. ATI took over a significant portion of the campus for that one week every summer. School was still in session for the public schools in Ohio, so my mom and I went, while my dad stayed in Cincinnati to work. This was my first significant exposure to ATI as a whole.

CC image courtesy of Flickr, Neil Conway. Editorial note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published as a guest post in a series on March 6, 2016. Alyssa is the writer of this post. Alyssa grew up Independent Fundamental Baptist and was homeschooled throughout her K-12 education. She currently is in a graduate program to earn

“It was not so much homeschooling that traumatized me as much as my mother’s mental illness. This was hidden by homeschooling, and the pain that damaged me came from the constant exposure to her psychiatric illness. I feel like someone roasted me over a fire, leaving me with burns to rest the remainder of my life, and I didn’t even know at the time what fire was.”

“I want people to know what PHC is really about. I can’t tell you how many times, even while I was still a student, I would have settled for the school just admitting the truth about itself, even if that meant I had to live with that truth forever.”

“Perhaps this is just for me, for me to finally put into words the terrible pain in my heart, which seems to slowly eat away at life like acid on skin. Sexual education. I received none as a child, absolutely none.”

“At 16 years old, I left ATI. I was never my mother’s daughter again. They left the cult shortly thereafter, reluctant and angry that I had ruined their happiness again. I would never outlive the title of black sheep. I was able to tell my mother some of what happened before she passed away recently, but it will never truly be resolved.”